The OPTEL (Optics and Electronics) research group is made of 8 permanent researchers, 6 PhD students and 1 post-doctoral student, is lead by Marc SCIAMANNA. Its research activities aim at theoretically and experimentally studying advanced photonic systems, i.e. systems that generate and manipulate photons for applications related to information processing and communication. The nonlinear dynamics of semiconductor lasers is studied for the purpose of innovative applications of all-optical signal processing, optical routing, and secure communications based on optical chaos. Reconfigurable optical waveguides based on photorefractive cristals are developped and studied on the basis of the physics of light self-focusing and spatial solitons interactions.

The team is also specialised in the study of optical pattern formation, i.e. self-organisation of a light beam into a spatially regular pattern. These optical patterns that emerge in spatially extended nonlinear media exhibit a great interest for the development of innovative approaches for addressable optical buffering.

An important activity of the team is related also to the design and conception of new laser sources: vertical cavity lasers that are continuously tunable over a very large range of wavelengths, thermical and opto-electronic study of the performances of new light sources, vertical cavity UV light sources based on nitride materials, lasers based on antimonide with wavelength emission in the range 2-3 microns for gaz spectroscopy.

The OPTEL research team also contributes to the teaching activities at SUPELEC with a Master level specialization in photonics for the SUPELEC engineer students and with a joint Master research program called SP&M (Sciences Physiques & Matériaux) with Nancy University and University Paul Verlaine de Metz.